How to Run a Google Ad

You're ready to run your first Google Ad, a smart move for reaching customers at the exact moment they're searching for what you offer. Running a successful campaign might seem complicated, but it's really a series of straightforward steps. This guide will walk you through the entire process, from setting up your account and defining your goals to writing compelling ad copy and tracking your results.

Setting the Foundation: Before You Create Your First Campaign

Jumping directly into the Google Ads interface without a plan is a quick way to waste your budget. Taking 30 minutes to lay out your strategy first will make every subsequent step more effective. Think of this as getting your ingredients ready before you start cooking.

1. Define Your Goal: What Do You Want to Achieve?

Start with the simplest question: Why are you running this ad? Every decision you make - from the keywords you choose to the ad copy you write - will stem from this answer. Be specific.

• Drive Website Traffic: Your goal is to get relevant visitors to a specific page, like a blog post or a product category page. The primary metric will be clicks.
• Generate Leads: You want people to fill out a form, download a guide, or call your business. Your primary metric is conversions (form fills, calls).
• Increase Sales: For e-commerce businesses, the goal is straightforward – you want users to complete a purchase. The main metric is revenue or return on ad spend (ROAS).

Choose one primary objective for your first campaign. You can always run different campaigns with different goals later.

2. Understand Your Keywords

Keywords are the foundation of Google Search ads. They are the search terms you're telling Google you want your ad to show up for. Your goal is to find the sweet spot between what your customers are searching for and what your business offers.

Think from your customer's perspective. If you sell custom hiking boots, your potential customers might search for:

• "best hiking boots for wide feet" (a long-tail, very specific keyword)
• "waterproof hiking boots" (a broader keyword)
• "custom leather boot maker" (a solution-aware keyword)

Use Google's Keyword Planner (inside your Ads account) or just type your ideas into Google's search bar and see what auto-suggestions pop up. Start with a focused list of 10-20 highly relevant keywords. You want quality, not quantity.

3. Set a Realistic Budget

Your Google Ads budget is how much you're willing to spend each day. You can start small! A budget of $10-$20 per day is perfectly fine for learning the ropes and gathering initial data.

A few things to remember:

• It's a Daily Budget: You set a daily average. Google might spend a little more on some days and a little less on others, but it won't exceed your average monthly limit (your daily budget x 30.4).
• You Only Pay Per Click (PPC): In most cases, you're not paying for your ad to just show up, you're paying when someone actually clicks on it.
• You Can Change It Anytime: Your budget isn't locked in. You can pause your campaign or adjust your spending at any moment.

Step-by-Step: Creating Your Google Ads Campaign

With your goals, keywords, and budget defined, you're ready to build your campaign in the Google Ads platform.

Step 1: Choose Your Campaign Objective and Type

After you sign in to Google Ads and click to create a "New campaign," Google will ask for your primary objective. This screen will look familiar if you completed the planning step. Select the goal that matches your ambition (Sales, Leads, Website Traffic, etc.).

Next, you’ll be asked to choose a campaign type. For new advertisers, the most common and effective type is Search. This means your ads will appear on Google's search results pages when people type in your keywords.

Step 2: Configure Bidding and Budget

Here, you'll tell Google how much you're willing to spend. First, you set the daily budget you decided on earlier. Then, you choose a bidding strategy.

Bidding can feel complex, but Google's automated strategies make it easy to start:

• Maximize Clicks: If your goal is website traffic, this is a great starting point. Google's algorithm will try to get you the most clicks possible within your budget.
• Maximize Conversions: If your goal is leads or sales (and you have conversion tracking set up), this tells Google to bid in a way that generates the most valuable actions.

Start with "Maximize Clicks." Once your campaign has some data (usually after 30-50 clicks), you can switch to a conversion-focused strategy.

Step 3: Define Location and Language Targeting

Specify where your customers are. Be as precise as you can. If you're a local plumber, you probably only want to target your city or specific zip codes. If you're an e-commerce store that only ships to the United States and Canada, select just those countries. Don't waste money showing ads to people you can't serve.

Similarly, choose the languages your customers speak.

Step 4: Set Up Your Ad Groups

This is where your campaign becomes organized. An "Ad Group" is a container that holds a small, tightly-themed set of keywords and the ads that are relevant to them.

Let's go back to the hiking boot example. You wouldn't want to lump all your keywords together. Instead, you'd create themed Ad Groups:

• Ad Group 1: Waterproof Boots
• Ad Group 2: Custom Fit Boots

This structure ensures your ads are highly relevant to the search query, which improves your results and lowers your costs.

Crafting Ad Copy That Gets Clicks

After you input your keywords for an ad group, you'll reach the ad creation screen. This is where you write the text that users will see. Modern Google Search ads are "Responsive Search Ads."

The Anatomy of a Responsive Search Ad

Instead of writing one static ad, you provide a list of headlines and descriptions, and Google's AI mixes and matches them to find the best-performing combinations for different users.

• Headlines (up to 15): Short, 30-character text snippets. They are the most prominent part of your ad.
• Descriptions (up to 4): Longer, 90-character text snippets that provide more detail below the headlines.
• Final URL: The specific landing page on your website people will go to when they click the ad.

Tips for Writing Compelling Ad Copy

• Include Your Primary Keyword: Use your most important keywords in at least a few of your headlines to show users the ad is relevant to their search.
• Focus on Benefits, Not Just Features: A feature is what your product is ("durable leather"). A benefit is what it does for the customer ("boots that last a lifetime").
• Add a Strong Call-to-Action (CTA): Tell users exactly what you want them to do. Phrases like "Shop Now," "Get a Free Quote," or "Download Your Guide" set clear expectations.
• Highlight What Makes You Unique: Do you offer free shipping, a lifetime warranty, or 24/7 support? Mention it in your copy!

Don't Forget the Landing Page!

Your "Final URL" is critically important. Your ad might be perfect, but if it sends a user to a confusing or irrelevant page, you've wasted your money. Make sure the landing page directly relates to the promise made in your ad. If your ad talks about "waterproof boots," the link should go to your waterproof boots category page, not your homepage.

After You Launch: What to Watch For

Running a successful campaign isn't about setting it and forgetting it. It's about launching, monitoring, and optimizing. Check in on your campaign a couple of times a week to see how things are going.

Key Metrics to Monitor

• Clicks: The number of times people have clicked your ad.
• Impressions: The number of times your ad was shown on a search results page.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): A percentage calculated as Clicks ÷ Impressions. A high CTR (generally above 3-5% for search) means your ad is relevant and resonating with searchers.
• Average Cost-Per-Click (CPC): How much you're paying, on average, for each click.
• Conversions: The number of times users completed your desired action (e.g., a purchase or lead submission). This is the most important metric for determining success.

Optimize, Test, and Improve

As you gather data, you'll start to see what's working and what isn't.

• Pause Poorly Performing Keywords: If some keywords are getting a lot of clicks but zero conversions, they might not be the right fit. Consider pausing them.
• Refine Your Ad Copy: Google will show you which headlines and descriptions perform best. Periodically swap out the lower-performing ones with new ideas to keep improving your CTR.
• Add Negative Keywords: In your search terms report, you might find your ad showing up for irrelevant searches (e.g., "free hiking boot repair" if you only sell new boots). Adding "free" and "repair" as negative keywords will prevent this waste.

Optimization is an ongoing process of small tweaks that lead to big improvements over time.

Final Thoughts

Launching a Google Ads campaign is a powerful step towards growing your business. It involves setting a clear goal, understanding your keywords, creating organized campaigns with relevant ad copy, and consistently monitoring your results to find what works best. With this framework, you have everything you need to start attracting high-intent customers today.

Once your ads are running, the real challenge becomes understanding the complete picture. The data in Google Ads tells you about clicks and costs, but what about the revenue a specific ad generated in Shopify or the leads it created in your CRM? That’s why we built Graphed. Our platform connects directly to all your data sources, allowing you to instantly build real-time dashboards with simple, conversational language - like asking, "Show me my Facebook and Google Ads spend versus the revenue they generated this month." We put all your metrics in one place so you see the whole journey, from ad spend to final sale.